Back to Burgundy

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Storyline (warning: spoilers)

The story-telling power of wine is the context of Cédric Klapisch's Back to Burgundy, a film detailing a year in the life of a fictional wine-making family in Burgundy. The taste of the family wines propel the characters back into the past, wrinkling up time for the characters. Back to Burgundy has a gentle low-stakes mood (although the actual stakes are often quite high). When the film focuses on the wine-making process, in the progression from vine to bottle, it's a fascinating and detailed look at a very specific subculture.

When his father becomes ill, Jean (Pio Marmaï) returns home to the family vineyard in France after 10 years abroad. There has been little to no contact between Jean and his two siblings, Juliette (Ana Girardot) and Jérémie (François Civil). When their father dies, the siblings must make some serious decisions about the family business. Unable to pay the huge inheritance tax, they consider their options. They could sell the vineyard to pay the tax. They could rent out part of it. Jérémie has married into another wine-making family, and it's expected he will step up to be a partner in his father-in-law's business. Jean, with a girlfriend and son back in Australia, has no intention of staying in France. That leaves Juliette. It's now up to her to make the decisions for the upcoming harvest, and she doesn't have her father to consult.

Where the film is on firmest ground is in specifics of the culture of wine-making: the seasonal workers showing up, the rowdy parties at the end of the harvest, the taste-testing during the fermenting process, the worried glances at the sky, the obsessive checking of Weather Apps. In these sequences, the film really knows what it is doing, knows what it wants to say and convey.